Previews

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

After being thoroughly intoxicated by the co-op multiplayer, we shifted gears to competitive multiplayer, which was no less awesome. Kane & Lynch takes a unique approach to setting up teams during each competitive match, placing everyone on the side of a band of criminals hoping to pull off a major heist. Keep in mind however that these are criminals we're talking about, and as such they have a tendency to break rules... and alliances.

While trying to physically seize a bank's liquid assets, you'll discover that some of your partners in crime may not be too keen on letting you keep your share when it could be put to better use in their own pockets. As a result, every job in Kane & Lynch's competitive multiplayer, dubbed "Fragile Alliance," goes south at some point, and the thieves eventually turn on each other in order to garner a bigger slice of the pie. Exactly when this happens is up to the players, but make no mistake that it will eventually happen.

If you are the first to go rogue and blow holes in one of your comrades, you'll not only get first crack at looting their new-fallen corpse, but your name (which appears above your head) will turn from white to orange, indicating that you are a filthy traitor. The other crooks will get a special bonus for icing you as a turncoat, but it's the risk you run in order to seize the most cash. Meanwhile, the thief you initially killed will be revived as a cop attempting to foil the robbers and who has the opportunity to forcefully confiscate your ill-gotten gains.

All of this amounts to a hectic hail of bullets in which you have to decide when and if to go rogue while you nab as much loot as possible. During our several rounds, we found that the more we played Kane & Lynch, the more our understanding of this fractured multiplayer mode deepened. We began to see specific tactical advantages to buddying up (it's easier to take out cops and traitor-crooks when acting as a pair), but also noticed that backstabbing our fellows could result in huge payouts. As long as we could make it out alive, that is, which was a distinctly challenging proposition given the fact that all of the thieves we just murdered were now charging into the fight as SWAT team members.

We only checked out one map during our several rounds, but even though we eventually grew comfortable navigating the rat's nest of hallways in the bank, we still found each game to be a new experience because of the constantly changing variables introduced by our cohorts betraying us. The betrayal aspect of Fragile Alliance cannot be overemphasized and it is because of this that we found the experience to be horribly addictive. No matter how strong you think your bond of friendship might be (even with people you work alongside, like your fellow videogame critics), it's no match for the overwhelming avarice of Kane & Lynch's devastating multiplayer.

As this holiday season fills to capacity with excellent games, we are pleased to see Kane & Lynch: Dead Men clawing its way to the top of the pile. With so many triple-A games rushing to release, Kane & Lynch provides a cool, anti-hero angle that few other games are going to be able to match.